Jacqueline Hyslop

Mr. Bless

AP Language and Composition

6 April 2018

If a Man Would Be Alone, Let Him Look at the Stars

​
In Lidia Yuknacitch’s ​The Book of Joan, the reader experiences the tortures of war and

sees the effects of greed on humanity. These principles also happen to be the staple of both

Thoreau and Emerson’s pieces about nature and innocence. Yuknavitch, like Thoreau and

Emerson, incorporates underlying themes of the purification of humanity, and the destruction

caused by greed.

The concept of innocence is very prominent in, ​ ​The Book of Joan, and Ralph Waldo

​ Emerson’s, ​Nature. In “Chapter

​ One,” of ​Nature, the author conveys his perception of purity by

comparing time spent in nature to time spent in a state of innocence. “The lover of nature is he

whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other, who has retained the

spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood,” (Emerson 242). Emerson believed that if you

spent enough time in nature, you would be cleansed of all corrupt feelings and activity.

Similarly, Yuknavitch admits that, because humans never took the time to appreciate nature, our

lives became so corrupt that we eventually destroyed ourselves. “Her (Joan) grief for these

mutating children rose in her like a second self, another body overtaking her own…”

(Yuknavitch 152). Sofar in the book, the angriest Joan has been was when the amoral cult leader,

Jean de Men, stole the souls of innocent children. Furthermore, (as mentioned in my previous

reflection) Yuknavitch subtly evokes the idea that Joan is the physical embodiment of Nature and
therefore supports the idea that, with nature comes purification. This realization also supports the

idea that the corrupt will always overpower the innocent, which is well-illustrated in Thoreau’s,

Life Without Principle. In this essay, the author articulates a flaw in society--that we falsely

recognize greed for intelligence. “...if he spends his whole day...making the earth bald before her

time, he is esteemed and industrious, and an enterprising citizen,” (Thoreau 2). The essayist

believed that our greed and selfishness encourages our depravity. Yuknavitch incorporates a

similar notion in, ​The Book of Joan, when she describes the main reason as to why the world

ended. “The water wars had ravaged all the continents, laying waste to what vegetation remained

under the gray orange glow of the dying sun. People had become territorial animals, Darwinian

cartoons,” (Yuknavitch 150). Humans had stripped the earth for all that it bore, and thus greed

arose. In the future, our avarice consumes our lives (literally) and we end up destroying each

other. Yuknavitch makes several points about materialism and the need to protect the

environment, which can be connected to the works of Thoreau and Emerson.